Remains of 12-year-old girl found at the former home of Australian Peter Gerard Scully accused of molesting Philippines children

Bangkok: Philippines police have found the remains of a 12-year-old girl in a house once rented by an Australian man accused of sexually assaulting children and producing child pornography to sell on the internet.

Australian Peter Gerard Scully after his arrest on charges of running a depraved paedophile ring. Photo: Bobby Lagsa/Inquirer Mindanao

The allegations have shocked investigators in the country that has emerged as the key hub in a billion-dollar cybersex industry where most of the victims are under 18 years old.

Police found the remains of the girl under the floorboards of a house in Surigao City in the country's north after Scully was arrested last week following after a three-week police stakeout. He is being held in northern Mindanao jail pending arraignment on numerous charges including rape, illegal detention and cyber crime laws.

Police said Scully's former partner told them the Australian accidentally killed one of his victims in 2013 and buried her under the house.

The partner, who was once allegedly a victim of Scully's sexual assaults, reportedly told police the girl was lured from her family's home in a village 30 kilometres from the house.

Advertisement

"Scully performed sexual acts according to his client's instructions and fantasy," said Angelito Magno, a regional director of the police's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

Czar Eric Nuqui, chief of the NBI's anti-human trafficking division, said Scully "lured young girls into his house and gained their trust, including making false promises of sending them to school and feeding them".

"Scully found out that what he was doing was a lucrative business and had clients all over Europe," Mr Nuqui said.

Australian Federal Police and Dutch police assisted Philippines police investigating Scully after investigators in the Netherlands uncovered videos on the internet.

Police said they will track down Scully's alleged international clients and press for prosecutions against them. They said they would also investigate whether any parents of allegedly abused children colluded with or were paid by Scully.

"We want to make sure whoever was helping Scully is arrested," an investigator told Philippines journalists.

Scully has been living in the Philippines since 2011 and frequently changed his address, police said. A Philippine National Police report last year warned the country had become a cybersex hotspot with criminals, producing child pornography to send via the internet to countries like the United States, Britain and Australia.

Victorian man Patrick Ronald Goggins, a 68-year-old Vietnam war veteran, was last year jailed for more than 11 years in a Melbourne court for paying four sisters aged between five and 15 from the Philippines island of Cebu to perform a range of sickening sex acts on a webcam. When questioned by police, Goggins said his victims would be "out on the scrapheap, living on rubbish" if he did not pay them to perform.

Two other Australians, Hilton Reece Munro, a private school teacher and Peter James Robinson, an engineer, are facing child sex charges in Cebu in unrelated cases. The men deny any wrongdoing.

Philippines police, welfare groups and legislators have been shocked by revelations that poor Filipino parents have forced their children to perform in front of webcams in return for money that is transferred to middle men from paedophiles in 14 countries.